Hands Held High
by Konsui's Little Brother
Summary: It's been years since the 'War' began, years since 'They' came into the town, and years since the Titans have had contact with anyone outside of the city. This explains why. A song-fic.


A/N: This is a new writing style for me but I think that it turned out alright. It should have seeing as I've been working on it for around six months.

* * *

It had always disgusted Starfire how the police were willing to let children do their work for them. They had not argued to Robin starting the Teen Titans up for more than a few hours, instead they had given a bunch of children -Cyborg had been the oldest and was only 14 at the time- the OK to fight criminals and super villains.

Now, years later, the town was falling apart. The police had long ago panicked and left. The citizens had no idea that they were protected by a handful of 'freaks' and that their beloved police force had left them because they were afraid, because they were too worried for their own lives to stick around and try to save the city.

Starfire woke up every morning knowing that she would, could, and wasn't going to live for much longer. She went out and fought 'Them' anyways. She was one of the only things that kept 'Them' at bay and the city alive.

_Words on loose leaf sheet complete comin'  
I jump on my mind, I summon the rhyme I'm dumpin'  
Healin' the blind, I promise to let the sun in  
Sick of the dark ways, we march to the drummin'_

Raven had never been more tired, more sick, more fed up, with anything or anyone. Robin's training sessions? She could deal with them. Cyborg's incessant...Cyborgness...? She could deal with that. Starfire's girl talks? Fine. Beast Boy's jokes? They didn't even register on her richtor scale. This did.

Two years ago the city had fallen under attack by an alien force. Five months after They first showed up, well into the third wave of aliens, the police abandoned Jump City. They had left the citizens of Jump, the people that had been unfortunate enough to be visiting at the time, and the Titans themselves to fight off 'Them'.

Raven had fought with all of her might. She had fought and she had fought and she was still fighting only now, now she was fighting not the aliens but Death itself. She had not been out on the battle field, out in the city, for months. Instead she stayed at the tower and used everything that she had to keep her team-mates, her city, her family, safe and alive.

_Jump when they tell us they want to see jumpin'  
F*** that! I want to see some fists pumpin'  
Risk somethin', take back what's yours  
Say somethin' that you know they might attack you for_

He hadn't been fully rested, fully charged, for a long time. Longer than Cyborg liked. He was constantly on his toes, never sure when he would have to launch himself into another fight, unable to eat properly, just waiting for Robin to sound the call and send them back out.

Cyborg had never hated himself more than he did now. Before, when the world actually made sense, he would go out and beat up whoever was bothering his city and then he would go back home and get some rest. Now being sent out into the city was something he dreaded, everyday the chance of their survival dropped a little, and he didn't know how to fix it.

Now the fight was at a standstill. The aliens weren't retreating. The Titans weren't retreating. The aliens weren't winning. The Titans weren't winning. In public, Cyborg smart-mouthed the aliens, he cursed them and told them that they were about to 'go down'. In private, he begged and pleaded with the sky, with 'Them', trying to at least get them to let his family leave safely.

_'Cause I'm sick of bein' treated like I have before  
Like I'm stupid standin' for what I'm standin' for  
Like this war's really just a different brand of war  
Like it doesn't cater to rich and abandon poor  
_

As a child Robin had been forced to put up with Batman. He was forced to put up with Superman and the Green Lantern and everyone else that had anything to do with the Justice League. When he had started the Titans he thought that he had escaped from that, from everything he said being shot down, from being a kid. Now he wished he could go back there.

During the two years that they had been trapped in the city no one had contacted them. There was no Doom Patrol. There were no Tamaranians. There was no Justice League. There certainly wasn't any Batman. It was just them. At least up until a week ago.

A week ago Batman had managed to get through. A week ago Robin had been told to leave his team. A week ago Bruce Wayne had told Richard Grayson to get out of Jump City and get back to Gotham. A week ago every rotten thought and rotten thing that Robin had ever said and thought about his mentor had been confirmed. A week ago Robin had told Batman, his mentor, his adoptive father, the one man that could and would not hesitate to kill him, to drop dead.

_Like they understand you in the back of the jet  
When you can't put gas in your tank  
These ******* are laughin' their way to the bank and cashin' the check  
Askin' you to have compassion and have some respect_

Beast Boy wasn't one to go around saying that he hated people, that didn't mean that he didn't think it. Beast Boy hated, even loathed, more people than any one would think he was capable but right now...Right now...He had never hated anyone or anything more than he did now.

The first few weeks of the battle, the reporters had gone on a field-day. They claimed that the team was 'losing their stuff' and that they were just playing around to get more attention. They claimed that this was all an elaborate plan to get the attention of the cities mayor and get more funding. Now...Now they had all fled for their lives.

Beast Boy hated the reporters; he was sure that it was their mockery that had kept reinforcements from coming. He hated the mayor; the wealth-ridden oaf had run from the city faster than the Titans could issue an -ignored- order to evacuate. He hated the aliens; they were the source of this mess after all. He hated the Doom Patrol; he had called them to come help every night for the past year and a half and had never spoken to anyone. He hated the citizens of Jump City; if they had just left town when the Titans had ordered them to in the beginning then this fight would be so much easier. More than anyone else though, he hated himself; if he was stronger than his family wouldn't be fighting for their lives.

_For a leader so nervous in an obvious way  
Stutterin' and mumblin' for nightly news to replay  
And the rest of the world watchin' at the end of the day  
In their livin' room laughin' like, "What did he say?"_

As the days passed, Starfire found that it was getting harder and harder to watch the T.V. It had once been a reprieve from the endless fighting and the madness that littered their city, now though, it was just a constant reminder that they weren't just stuck here but that the people outside of the city weren't taking them seriously.

She had heard the people that were stuck in the city speaking once, laughing and joking about how the mayor had tripped over his words on the news. They had laughed because he had tried to explain why he had left when there really 'was no danger'. They had believed him and they laughed about it. Starfire didn't think that they were laughing now.

Starfire didn't think it was funny. She didn't think it was comforting. She knew that even if they made it out of this town, even if it was just to the next town over for a brief amount of time, that he would never, ever be re-elected.

_Amen, amen _

The Teen Titans fought, day by day, night by night, attack by attack, to save a city that had abandoned them. They fought, not because they wanted to, not because they had been told to, but because they knew that they had to. If they didn't than the city would be destroyed in seconds.

Every day five children, because no one thought that they were anything more than that, went out to fight in a war. Every day they risked their lives and their home and the very people that they had dubbed their 'family' to save people that had made a mockery out of them. Every day the Titans lost a little bit more of their energy, a little bit more of their strength, and a little bit more of their sanity.

And they still fought, not for people that cared about them, not for the tower they lived in, not even for the rest of their 'family'. They fought because they knew that they were the cities, and then maybe even the rest of the planets, last hope.

_Amen, amen  
Amen_

In my livin' room watchin' but I am not laughin'  
'Cause when it gets tense, I know what might happen  
The world is cold, the bold men take action  
Have to react to get blown into fractions

Raven sat at home, day in and day out, because she was the one member that everyone else had agreed 'had to stay safe'. They needed her to heal their wounds when they came home, they needed her to take care of civilians that were caught in the crossfire, they needed to make sure that she stayed safe because she was the only thing that kept them alive and going back into the battle.

Every day Raven had to watch her team-mates, her family, fight for their lives. They could have run but they didn't. They were better than that, better than the other low-lines that called this city home, better than the other Honorary Titans that could have easily come to their aid. They were better than every one else because they had stayed and everyone else had left.

When the aliens came to Jump the Titans took action, they jumped into the fight just like they did every other fight, but...This one was different. This one had gone on longer than any other fight, even their battle with the Brotherhood Of Evil had ended sooner than this. But they were still fighting and they were still coming back to her for healing, each time looking worse than she had ever seen them.

_10 years old is somethin' to see  
Another kid my age drugged under a jeep  
Taken and bound and found later under a tree  
I wonder if he had thought, "The next one could be me"  
_

Everyday that they went out and fought was hard, some days were harder than others. Days when they couldn't save the civilians were the hardest for Beast Boy, they were hard on the other Titans too but it wasn't the same. They were upset that they had let it get so out of hand, Beast Boy was upset that he still wasn't strong enough to save those lives.

The day that the subway station was taken over; they couldn't get everyone out of the collapsing tunnels in time and eight people were killed. The time that the aliens derailed a tram, two died and one ended up comatose. The time that a family of three's car was shot to smithereens. The day the high-school blew up while it was still in session, over fifty-seven were injured, over twenty-three were killed, Tara Smith's body was never found.

Beast boy took every death, every injury to heart because he knew that it shouldn't have happened, that he could have stopped it from happening. At the tower he was silent, no longer the childish boy with an endless supply of cheesy jokes. In battle he was the most violent of all the Titans, not the weakest anymore. He was letting his true colors show because he was sick of seeing all the death and destruction that he could have prevented.

_Do you see the soldiers that are out today  
That brush the dust from bulletproof vests away?  
It's ironic, at times like this you pray  
But a bomb blew the mosque up yesterday  
_

Cyborg had never been very religious. Growing up in a family of scientists had broken him of any and all religious beliefs. Yet the longer that this fight went on the more he found himself praying to every known religious icon out there, and a few made up ones, that the madness wouldn't spread to the land outside of their city.

The Titans didn't use any fancy armor. They didn't have any shields or nano-ray blocking devices. They didn't even have standard, police-issued bulletproof vests. They just had their wits and whatever they could find to defend themselves with.

They were the only soldiers out there, the first and last line of defense. Cyborg hadn't been asked to start fighting but he had been given the chance to leave, Robin had given everyone that chance, and he hadn't taken it. Now he was stuck praying to Gods that he didn't believe in to just give him the strength to fight a little longer.

_There's bombs in the buses, bikes, roads  
Inside your market, your shops, your clothes  
My dad, he's got a lot of fear I know  
But enough pride inside not to let that show_

As Batman's side-kick, Robin had faced a lot of things. He had faced the Caped Crusader angry. He had faced every villain known to Gotham City. He was the leader of a group, first of rowdy teenagers, and now of a group of rowdy super-powered adults. He had faced Slade. He had faced the demon king, Trigon. He had faced a whole army of super powered villains. And he had never been as afraid as he was now.

It wasn't like a normal alien attack, they weren't just flying around and shooting lasers and there hadn't been any demands. Instead there were bombs hidden in the most unexpected places, people were disappearing off of the street only to reappear dead. Sure, there were lasers fired. Nano-ray lasers that turned whatever they hit back into their molecular state.

And everyday Robin was forced to swallow his fear, throw on the mask that he wore everyday, and try to keep his team from knowing just how terrified he really was. In his mind the team would fall apart if they knew how weak and pathetic he felt right now. So he wouldn't let them know. He couldn't let them know.

_My brother had a book he would hold with pride  
A little red cover with a broken spine  
On the back he hand wrote a quote inside  
"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die"_

Cyborg had always believed that most wars were started by the rich, the powerful, the ones that didn't have anything to lose. He had always known wars to be for something or over something or have some sort of basis. This one didn't.

There was no truth behind this fight. There wasn't any cause or problem that had started it. No conflicting beliefs or thoughts or politics of any sort. It had just started. And Cyborg didn't like it at all.

Instead the aliens had just appeared. There hadn't been anything to prompt the attack, nothing inside or outside of the city, it had just started. And all that Cyborg could do was try not to run out of fuel.

_Meanwhile, the leader just talks away  
Stutterin and mumblin' for nightly news to replay  
And the rest of the world watchin' at the end of the day  
Both scared and angry like, "What did he say?"_

When the aliens first attacked Jump City the mayor had fled to Steel City, where he had so graciously told the news reporters that 'there was nothing going on in my town'. The citizens of Jump had just laughed it off. Robin hadn't.

When the mayor blockaded the city off, successfully trapping everyone inside of the city, and the mayor still tried to tell everyone that 'nothing was wrong', the people of Jump got a little nervous. Robin thought that they were all idiots for believing him in the first place.

And when they finally realized that the mayor was a lying scum-bag, this was after the attacks started and he still insisted that everything was 'fine', Robin felt like laughing in their faces. But he didn't. Instead he tried to fight for them, to protect them, to keep them safe, and they turned their anger on him. And Robin still stayed.

_(Amen)  
With hands held high into a sky so blue  
(Amen)_

Cyborg knew that it couldn't go on like this forever, with everyone being killed off left and right, with the city being destroyed, with everyone living in fear, something would have to break sooner or later. And it wasn't going to be him.

_As the ocean opens up to swallow you  
(Amen)_

The city had given up, the mayor had given up, the other meta-humans had given up, but Beast Boy hadn't. He was still fighting his way through everything that had been thrown at him, still trying to save a city that had been 'condemned' by everyone else, still trying to keep his team-mates alive. And he always would.

(_Amen)  
With hands held high into a sky so blue  
(Amen)  
As the ocean opens up to swallow you_

Robin had never thought that anything like this would ever happen to him, or to his team-mates, but it had. It had happened and it still was happening so he was just going to have to fight his way through it. Because that was what he did, he fought his way through everything that was thrown at him so he could protect the people close to him.

_(Amen)  
With hands held high into a sky so blue  
(Amen)  
As the ocean opens up to swallow you  
_

She wanted to protect her team-mates, to fight with her team-mates, defend her team-mates, and all she could do was sit at the Tower and wait for them to come home so she could heal them. But that's what her team-mates needed so that's what Raven did. That's what she would keep doing. And she would keep doing it until they won this war.

_Yeah, with hands held high into a sky so blue  
The ocean opens up to swallow you..._


End file.
